The Forum, Bryanston
12 February 2019

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Cloud CX: Don't believe the vendors, try it out

Customer experience (CX) matters today more than ever, because we are all consumers and have experiences with all brands.

So said Mika Lefebvre, director at Genesys, speaking at ITWeb Cloud Summit 2019, in Johannesburg, this week.

"Think about apps such as Uber or Google Maps that offer real-time, helpful information and services. We have experiences with MiWay, Spotify or BMW, and we expect every business we procure services from to deliver that level of customer experience."

Providing the best, customised service, "managing the moments connected" and defining a better relationship between the business and the customer is the only way to be profitable and run a business in the future, he stressed.

Joining Lefebvre on stage, Karl Reed, chief solutions officer of Elingo, said cloud has become the true enabler of CX.

Cloud has democratised technology, and lowered the barriers to entry, said Reed. Before the cloud, it was incredibly hard for smaller entities to be as competitive as the big corporates.

He pointed to Gartner's forecast for public cloud services from January 2018: when it comes to cloud CRM application services, Gartner forecasts compound annual growth of 22% by 2021.

"Who would have thought there has been a 56% cloud adoption in the past two to three years?" noted Reed.

Karl Reed, chief solutions officer at Elingo.

A further 19% of contact centres surveyed said there was a ‘near future' of adoption in the cloud, defining the ‘near future' as during 2019, while 25% said they had not implemented yet.

Also, although contact centres have traditionally been wary of hosting their voice recordings in the cloud, 60% are now doing so, he pointed out.

"Cloud gives everyone access to features that weren't available five years ago," added Lefebvre. "But how does a business successfully implement a cloud CX service?"

Lefebvre and Reed offered three tips.

Firstly, identifying the right platform or solution is key, as not all platforms are created equal.

Secondly, try it out. "Don't believe the vendors," advised Lefebvre. "We are not in the world where we need to trust software vendors. See and try it for yourself."

And contact centres do not have to do everything at once, added Reed. "Buy yourself a try: first walk, then run and then fly. Put it in small environments and test it out first, then expand from there."

"A trusted advisor is what you need, not a system integrator per se. Whatever system you are implementing, you are looking for somebody who can give you what the real truth is and help you down this path to cloud."

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